People who decide to become doctors, teachers, and IT engineers often need years of college to get the experience they need to be employed. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get a great job in other professions without a college degree.
Self-employed creators and entrepreneurs are blossoming in the post–COVID world we are entering. And other jobs involving sales and marketing often don’t need any more than a high school diploma. Auto insurance agents’ pay is better than you may think. Plumbers and other skilled laborers sometimes require technical training but not a four-year degree.
We’ll cover the upsides to jobs you don’t need a college degree for. We’ll also touch on where these industries are headed and whether college is going to become unnecessary for more people in the near future.
#1 – Blogger/Content Writer
With the internet more accessible than ever before and remote jobs flourishing since the pandemic, it is easier than ever for creative people to get jobs producing content for companies. Bloggers, vloggers, content writers, SEO specialists, and other creatives can choose from a large variety of jobs.
Having a college degree as a content creator or a writer online might help you get a position or a client over someone who doesn’t have a degree, but it’s absolutely not a requirement. If you are trying to be a self-employed or freelance writer, it’s even easier to let your work speak for itself.
Companies or individuals who want to hire you to create written content are going to look at your writing skills. They want to know your style, flexibility, and ability to follow directions. These things are measured not by a college degree but by the examples you’ve produced throughout the years.
Building a Writing Portfolio
Try to create as much content as you can before applying for positions. Start your own blog. Write about anything you have a knack for. Your niche can be self-help pieces for losing weight or life hack articles on fixing up your apartment.
Find your category, and it will help you create a stronger resume and sense of direction when finding people who want to work with you. Your income will only be limited by what you want to achieve. Some content writers and creators can make over six figures a year.
#2 – Insurance Agent
Being an insurance agent requires three main skills: being able to sell, having the ability to learn quickly, and having vast knowledge of insurance. Insurance agents don’t need a college education. They do need to pass a licensure exam. Insurance companies might look at whether you’ve accomplished anything in the world of sales before they hire you.
Some insurance companies pay agents a salary, while other agents can earn commissions. Like the writing jobs we discussed, being an insurance agent is all about the hustle. You need to acquire a certain number of customers for your insurance company, and you get a percentage of the profits from each policy you sell.
This requires great people skills and a keen eye for what customers want. Don’t lie to people to get more sales, but work with the customers to find the right policy for them. You can work with more popular insurance companies like State Farm or Progressive if you want the opportunity to acquire more customers.
Smaller companies are more intimate, but there are fewer potential customers. If you want to be an insurance agent who’s part of the growth of a company, you can join a smaller organization and help it to flourish. This takes more patience and shouldn’t be your only source of income in the beginning, though.
Insurance agents can make as much money as they want to, depending on the number of clients they want to take on. This makes it a career with large potential. The average insurance agent makes just over $50,000 a year, which is reasonable for a career that doesn’t require a college degree.
#3 – Food Industry: Servers and Cooks
We need to clarify something here first: fine dining restaurants are often going to require their cooks to have culinary degrees. But if you love the world of cooking and don’t have a culinary degree, there are still plenty of restaurants you can work at.
Consider somewhere between fancy and fast food. Red Lobster, Olive Garden, or another similar eatery is a great place to make some good food for customers at a decent salary. If you end up working in fast-food restaurants, the money is not going to be as good.
If making the food isn’t your thing, maybe consider serving it. Being a waiter is not the most stress-free job, but it is wonderful for folks who love talking to people. Socializing is the main part of being a server, and if you bring the food out with a positive attitude, you can get some really good tip money.
The more experience you have as a server, the higher your chances are of working at a restaurant that is higher class. If the menu is expensive, the tips will often be better.
#4 – Grocery Store Manager
Working in retail isn’t the most fun if you’re at the bottom of the ladder. If you stay at a grocery store or retail location for many years, though, you should have the opportunity to go into business and management. This is one of the best jobs you can get without a college degree because it doesn’t require anything but experience and hard work.
Grocery store managers need to be able to handle their employees and talk to the customers. If you have a penchant for staying organized and working with people, grocery store management is a great career choice.
Hopefully, you can see there are many jobs for people who don’t have an education beyond high school. All it takes is some creative decision-making and hard work to get an unconventional career off the ground. Look for jobs like these on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed if you don’t know where to start.